always wear shoes in the attic

John and his father were working in the garage together when Henry got a call.

“I gotta go help Jerry jump his car so he can get to work.”

“Can I go with? I can help.”

“I know ya can, slick, but go inside and help your mother with whatever she’s up to.”

Then his father left, and John cleaned up the tools and went inside to clean up his hands, and went to the hallway where he had seen his mother standing when he came in the house. She was standing under the attic door, looking up at it with her hands on her hips. Behind and above that door, somewhere in the space between the ceiling and the roof, was John’s old baby carriage that Mary Louise had asked Henry to get down for her probably a dozen times.

When she saw John come down the hall with a dish towel in his hands, she asked: “Where’s your father?”

“He went to go help Jerry.”

Mary Louise huffed and rolled her eyes. “That man. Never does a damn thing I ask.”

John had never heard his mother talk about his father like that. He was sort of stunned.

“Go and get Ronny. If your father won’t help me, I’ll do it myself.”

Their next-door neighbor Ronny was a simple sort of man who drank too much and was always home. As John ran to get him, he wondered why asking someone else to do something for you constituted doing it yourself. When he got to the door which had for the last several decades been in want of a fresh coat of paint, he knocked on it three times. It was unusual, John thought. Ronny’s usually sitting out here on the swing. He must be inside.

Back in the hallway, barefoot, Mary Louise’s frustration grew. After another moment or two, she grasped the dangling attic door rope and pulled.

Across the street, John knocked a second time on Ronny’s door, and wrung his fingers. He was still holding the towel he’d used to dry his hands after helping his father in the garage. He felt…nervous. Anxious perhaps. He didn’t know why.

The attic door came down softly, and with much less effort than Mary Louise had anticipated. Five metal stairs unfolded and came to a gentle stop just below her knees. “Easy.” She thought. “I’ll have the carriage down in no time at all.” She climbed into the dark and dusty attic and began her search for the carriage, neglecting to turn on the light.

At Ronny’s house, John was now banging on the door. His mother did not like to be kept waiting. Almost immediately, the door opened and a smelly, groggy Ronny said “What!”

“My mom needs your help getting the carriage down from the attic. Can you please come?” he asked. Ronny had always liked Mary Louise, and had for many years seized every opportunity to help her when her husband was away.

Mary Louise had made three mistakes.

Two of them trivial. The third, fatal. Her first mistake had been climbing into the attic without shoes on, and her second mistake had been forgetting to turn on the light bulb when she got up there.

Her third mistake, the one that sealed the deal, was pulling the carriage towards the attic door and down the stairs, backwards. You see, the carriage had been filled with scrapbooks—something Mary Louise might have noticed if she had remembered to turn on the light, and something she might have been able to stop if she had been wearing shoes. But dust can be slippery, and darkness can sometimes spell death.

John was walking quickly towards the house, with Ronny in tow, who also had no shoes on. When they heard the commotion, they ran, and the tableau that greeted them in the hallway sent both of their knees to the floor.

Underneath the carriage, and crumpled like a sad doll lay his mother, her spine an alarming shape. Scrapbooks and photos, thrown from the fall, lay strewn about the hall, and one wheel of the carriage was turning slowly, squeaking. Not breathing but no longer complaining about his John’s father, Mary Louise was dead.